In the third week of the Sean Combs trial, one of the most emotional testimonies so far came from a rape accuser and former employee identified as "Mia." On Thursday, she spent much of her time on the witness stand in tears, avoiding eye contact with Combs as he watched from the defense table.
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00:00A week three of the Sean Combs trial is ending with some of the most emotionally
00:04wrenching testimony we've heard in the trial so far. We're hearing testimony
00:08from the second sex assault accuser to take the stand against Combs, Sean
00:12Combs' personal assistant. She worked for him for a total of about eight years.
00:17She's testifying under the pseudonym Mia. For much the day Thursday Mia was in
00:22tears on a witness stand with her head bowed and her eyes facing away from
00:26Combs as he sat watching at the defense table. When they met in 2009 she told
00:32the jury that Sean Combs answered the door to his Manhattan apartment in only his
00:37underwear. It was during her job interview. She described working without sleep for
00:42as many as five days straight and at one point collapsing in exhaustion. Most
00:47poignantly she described four sexual assaults. The first assault she described
00:52was only a few months into the job. Combs was throwing himself a 40th
00:56birthday party at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. She said Combs ordered her to
01:00drink two shots of vodka to toast his birthday and she said she remembers
01:04then leaning against a wall and Combs face coming closer and becoming blurry.
01:10She said she regained consciousness in another room and the sun was coming up.
01:14In another attack that she described she said Combs raped her as she slept in the
01:19bunk beds of a staff room. She woke up to the weight of Combs on top of her and
01:25heard him say be quiet. She also said he attacked her on another occasion there
01:31in that mansion as she knelt in his closet to pack his bags.
01:35Mia told the jurors that another attack happened on Combs private jet when he
01:39pulled her into the bedroom in the rear of the plane as everyone else on the
01:43plane was asleep. Prosecutors seemed to realize she
01:46would be vulnerable on cross-examination when Combs lawyers want to know why she
01:51stayed and why she stayed silent. So prosecutors asked these same questions
01:57and Mia explained that she was ashamed, exhausted, and terrified.
02:01She'd seen Combs beat other women without consequence, she'd said.
02:05She herself had been thrown into walls by Combs, thrown backwards into a pool,
02:10cursed at. Mia corroborated some of the violence described by R&B artist Cassie Ventura.
02:17They say Combs beat and threatened Ventura so he could keep watching her have sex
02:21with male escorts in these freak-off performances that are at the center of
02:25the sex trafficking case. To read all our coverage on the Diddy trial,
02:29head to BusinessInsider.com